Richard Joseph Daley (1902–76) served as mayor of Chicago, IL from 1955 until his death. He was one of a generation of Democratic mayors of large cities known as “machine” politicians because of the large patronage networks they controlled. Daley’s machine was widely credited with delivering a critical bloc of votes for John F. Kennedy in 1960.

The Daley family lived in the heavily Irish working-class neighborhood of Bridgeport, where fears of racial integration ran high. Because of his loyalty to similar communities, Daley resisted Martin Luther King’s efforts for neighborhood integration.

Following a period of organizing and marches in Chicago, King remarked that northern racism was even more intransigent than that of the south. Daley’s connections to Washington, DC attracted significant federal funding to Chicago in the 1950s and 1960s, much of which he used to construct large, high-rise public housing developments that concentrated Chicago’s growing African American population. He was also credited with reviving Chicago’s aging downtown infrastructure. Daley gained national publicity again in 1968, using heavy-handed tactics to subdue anti-war protesters at the Democratic National Convention.

In 1989 Daley’s oldest son, Richard M. Daley was elected mayor. In an effort to separate himself from his father’s image, soon after beginning his first term, he moved out of Bridgeport into an integrated, gentrified new neighborhood just west of downtown.